Photo: Noah Jackson
l Creating the Ulu Papar biocultural community protocol 143
Agriculture, a key livelihood for the UP community, is
limited due to access restrictions to traditional
agriculture sites.
community with legal tenure of customary
lands inside the park, and it was unclear
whether the CUZ areas could support their
livelihood needs (Pacos, 2004).
In 2009, the Sabah Government began
the process to nominate the Crocker Range
Biosphere Reserve (CRBR), which is a
designation under UNESCO’s Man and the
Biosphere Programme.2 The CRBR would
adopt the entire Crocker Range Park
(1,400 km 2) as the core zone for strict
conservation. Areas adjacent to the boundary would form the buffer zone, where
limited activities would be permitted.3 A
transition zone would encircle the buffer
zone, where conservation activities and
mixed development, such as housing and
commercial estates, roads and infrastructure, would be permitted. Ulu Papar falls
under both buffer and transition zones,
while the CUZ would be implemented as
an exemption within the core zone. Poten-
tially impacting over 400 villages on the
park periphery, the CRBR is still at a
conceptual phase and community consultations are still preliminary.
Then in 2009, the Sabah State Government announced plans to build the
Kaiduan Dam, to supply water to the capital. The project would impound 320ha of
Ulu Papar as a catchment area and
submerge the villages of Timpayasa, Tiku,
Buayan and Babagon Laut (adjacent to Ulu
Papar). The project met with public
outrage when it claimed the Ulu Papar
valley was uninhabited. Although the plans
pose immediate and obvious contradictions to the government’s plans to
nominate the CRBR, the status of the dam
project remains unknown. The Ulu Papar
community vehemently oppose the dam.
However, their complete lack of tenure
security means they have no legal foundation for rejecting the proposed dam.
Collaborative research in Ulu Papar
In 2004, spurred by interest in Sabah Parks
to find innovative solutions to the Ulu
Papar conflict, a consortium of partners
initiated a joint research project to investigate and document resource use patterns
in Ulu Papar. 4 A participatory action
research approach was designed to build
the capacity of indigenous community
researchers to document the key ethnobiological resources important for community
livelihoods and jointly monitor how they
are used, managed and protected by the
community (GDF, 2009). 5 The term
2 The UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme aims to set a scientific basis for the
improvement of the relationships between people and their environment globally. See:
http://tinyurl.com/unesco-mab
3 Existing legislation in force on State lands may place limitations on communities in buffer
zones, for example prohibitions on hunting and restrictions in watershed areas.
4 Led by the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF), Sabah Parks and the Ulu Papar community,
and funded by the Darwin Initiative UK, this eight-year initiative has, over the years, included
partners such as Pacos Trust, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and the
University of Kent UK.
5 Research to collect baseline data (e.g. locations of important areas, key resources important for
livelihoods) was a necessary first step for communities to voice their concerns and expectations.
The data amassed from this research is vital to building a convincing and realistic proposal to
resolve access, use and tenure issues, understanding the resource use and cultural significance
of the Ulu Papar landscape so that discussions could focus on practicable solutions and realistic
expectations.